Nick Flynn just published an interesting article titled “The Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir of Torture” in the February 2008 issue of Esquire. On the one hand, the piece is exactly what the subhead describes it as, a story about the author’s trip to Istanbul to listen to accounts of torture from former prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But the essay does its job is a very rambling way, offering poetic asides about memories, perceptions, families, and dreams.

In one section, Flynn describes his meditation retreat with a Vietnamese Zen master:

Thich Nhat Hahn says it is a mistake to say, “The rain is falling,” to say, “The wind is blowing.” What is rain if it is not falling? he asks. What is wind if it is not blowing? The falling is the rain, the blowing is the wind.

This passage had nothing to do with writing; it was meant to speak to the impermanence of our existence. But it also gave me a little “Aha!” moment. Have I been guilty of writing a sentence in which the wind blew? Did I ever say that the rain was falling? Was there really a need to say so? What else would they be doing? Wind blows. Rain falls. And words can be redundant.

It reminded me of the need to prune my prose. Not something I always do wisely here … but you know what I mean.

Perhaps that’s an inconsequential and insulting moral to take from such a horrifying essay, but I’m a writer. I commit such crimes all the time.